AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Having recaptured Snowball, Harriet broke the simmering silence. ‘It’s going to take a lot of effort on my part to build up a big enough customer base for the yard. That can’t be helped.’
‘I understood that you’d moved to Ireland to embrace the simple way of life.’
‘The simple way of life became much more complicated when I took on a partner and the need to raise my profit margins,’ Harriet pointed out ruefully.
‘If that’s all that’s dragging you away, take the loss out of my side of the balance sheet,’ Rafael advised smoothly.
The nature of that careless offer dismayed Harriet. ‘Please don’t make suggestions like that—’
With easy dexterity he captured her hand in his to hold her. ‘You want to be with me. You think I don’t know that?’
Harriet pulled her fingers free. ‘But I don’t want to be with you so much that I’d let you virtually pay for my time!’
Her mobile phone went off again just before she reached the yard and she dug it out.
‘Forgive me…I’m hopelessly spoilt by always getting exactly what I want when I want,’ Rafael admitted, without a flicker of embarrassment. ‘Dinner tonight?’
At the sound of his dark, deep drawl the troubled light in her blue eyes vanished. ‘OK…’
As excited as a teenager, and thoroughly embarrassed by that reality, Harriet finished her working day as early as she could and raced back to the cottage to rustle through her wardrobe and paint her nails. Right on the dot of eight Rafael hit his car horn to alert her to his arrival. She fled into the kitchen, for pride demanded that she did not respond to the blast of a horn. Two minutes passed, slowly and painfully. Now she wanted to go to the door, but felt she couldn’t, and to distract her frantic nerves she threw Peanut’s ball.
She was disconcerted when the back door opened as she had forgotten it was unlocked. Rafael appeared to a chorus of frantic barks from Samson, who then went into ingratiating mode. Tall, dark and extravagantly handsome in a casual dark pinstripe suit worn with a collarless silk shirt, Rafael studied her with tawny intensity, his impassive face unnerving her. ‘I saw you vanish in here.’
Harriet blushed as hotly as a schoolgirl caught in the act of misbehaviour.
Rafael angled his arrogant dark head to one side and continued to survey her, all masculine control and cool. ‘Is it possible that you are trying to train me?’
Harriet struggled to keep a straight face, but his astute guess was too much for her and a helpless laugh bubbled from her throat.
Peanut dropped her ball hopefully in front of him.
‘Why do you have a pig in your kitchen?’ Rafael enquired with commendable calm.
‘Shush…Peanut doesn’t know she’s a pig. She thinks she’s a dog.’
Peanut nosed the ball encouragingly right up to the toes of his Italian leather loafers. He pushed it back. Tiring of his intransigence, the little pig picked up the ball again and dropped it down right on top of his foot.
‘I think the pig may be trying to train
me too.’ Brilliant eyes alive with amusement, Rafael sent the ball flying across the tiled floor.
With an exaggerated gallantry that made her smile, he tucked her into the fabulous sports car parked outside. She had to squint at the logo to appreciate that it was a Lamborghini, and she was suitably impressed. He took her to a tiny restaurant overlooking a rocky sea inlet with water so dazzlingly blue it might have been a tropical lagoon. They appeared to be the only diners, and the service was so silent and discreet that she never quite managed to see the person whose hand topped up her wine. Or perhaps it was the company that made it excessively hard for her to stay aware of what was happening beyond the charmed circle of their table. She ate her way appreciatively through a delicate salmon terrine, dallied over wafer-thin slices of lamb and baby vegetables that melted in her mouth, and savoured the thorough indulgence of being urged to enjoy two puddings instead of one.
Stunning golden eyes watched her with appreciation. ‘It’s so novel to be with a woman who eats.’
‘Luke was happiest when I was starving and showing off my skeleton,’ Harriet admitted, in a sudden rush of confidence over the Brazilian coffee that was served with liqueurs.
Rafael skimmed a sensual forefinger along the back of her hand in self-assured reproof. ‘You are blessed with heavenly curves…don’t lose them.’
Her gaze meshing with the tawny glow of his, she was suddenly as out of breath as if she had run up a steep hill. ‘I can safely promise you that the curves are here to stay for the foreseeable future.’
‘With me you can be yourself.’
Harriet let the sweet rich honey of the liqueur touch her tongue, and longed for the taste of his passionate mouth on hers. As if he could read her mind, he rose unhurriedly upright and escorted her back out to the car.
A mixture of panic, bewilderment and guilty excitement was now in control of her. She was no longer thinking about Luke every five minutes. In fact the painful memories of her former fiancé and his affair with Alice, she registered in surprise, had begun to fade from her conscious mind without her actually noticing the fact. Even so, there was not a smidgeon of commonsense in what she was feeling: she was as mad for Rafael Cavaliere Flynn as a reckless teenager. Yet wasn’t that exactly what she had told herself she wanted and needed? A silly fling that counted no costs and looked for no future?
But in a moment of stark self-doubt Harriet feared that if she slept with Rafael she would still want him in the morning, and keep on wanting him for far longer than could be considered cool, controlled or casual. That knowledge scared the heck out of her, for Rafael would not offer her any form of commitment. He had been upfront about that, and she could not criticise him on that score. Yet the same male could make an art form out of creating a romantic ambience, she acknowledged ruefully. But that was only artifice, and she would be foolish to forget that reality. Her emotions still seemed to be all over the place. Was that why she felt so agonisingly vulnerable? Suddenly she was terribly afraid of being hurt again.
